Category Archives: Libya Benghazi Muslim Brotherhood murder

MIT, Boston Financial Support for al Qaeda

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The Holyland Foundation trial in 2007, was a case proving domestic financial support for terror operations. Only selective documents from the trial have been released and the Justice Department refuses to declassify others. Why?

Some people were prosecuted, others were given a pass by Eric Holder. One would think this would have stopped all domestic terror operatives in the United States from supporting factions such as al Qaeda, Boko Haram or Islamic States. Well, not so much. In fact funding is quite robust today and out of locations and institutions that are well known and in cooperation with radical imams leading mosques across the country. Hello…..FBI where are you and why no investigation into mosque operations? That question has been asked and answered but where is the IRS?

Case in point as the light is shined on Massachusetts Institute of Technology..

MIT’s Muslim chaplain raised money for al-Qaeda groups

Everyone at MIT no doubt assumed that Laher was a “moderate.” To question that assumption would have been “Islamophobic.”

“Al Qaeda’s Base at MIT,” by Ilya Feoktistov and Charles Jacobs, Breitbart, May 11, 2015 (thanks to The Religion of Peace):

At the end of April, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology unveiled a permanent memorial to MIT Police Officer Sean Collier. Officer Collier was gunned down by the Boston Marathon bombers, Chechen refugees Tamerlan and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, three days after they blew up the Marathon.

It is painful to learn that in the late 1990s, there were students at MIT who helped recruit for the Chechen jihad and raised funds for Al Qaeda-affiliated groups operating in the Tsarnaevs’ homeland. It is even more painful that the man who led this fundraising effort was still on MIT’s staff when Officer Collier was gunned down.

Suheil Laher had been MIT’s Muslim chaplain for almost 20 years. Today he continues to preach at the Islamic Society of Boston, the extremist mosque founded by MIT students near campus, where the Tsarnaevs worshipped during their radicalization.

Americans for Peace and Tolerance have just released a mini-documentary, “Al Qaeda’s Base at MIT,” showing how MIT Muslim chaplain Suheil Laher used his leadership of the MIT Muslim Students Association as a vehicle for raising money for Al Qaeda causes around the world. We especially focus on the Al Qaeda affiliate in Chechnya, which Laher and his associates lionized, even as MIT trusted him to be its Muslim students’ spiritual guide.

Suheil Laher came to MIT as a student in 1990 and by 1998, he became the MIT Muslim chaplain. By the year 2000, he also became president of a Muslim charity based in Boston called Care International, which was founded by Osama Bin Laden’s mentor Abdullah Azzam and was originally called “Al Kifah Refugee Center.” Care International was, in essence, a fundraising vehicle for mujahideen. After the leader of Al Kifah in Brooklyn, “the Blind Sheikh” Omar Abdel-Rehman, was convicted for his role in the first World Trade Center bombing in 1993, Boston’s Care International took over as Al Qaeda’s main base in the United States. Laher, then, was quite an important figure in Al Qaeda’s leadership here. His perch at MIT meant that he had easy access to the best American Muslim minds – and their world-class technical skills.

As a religious scholar and an engineer, Laher was both the spiritual and technological leader of Care International. He pioneered the Jihadist use of the new Internet medium to fundraise and recruit for Al Qaeda causes online. Laher’s personal website prominently featured Abdullah Azzam’s notorious call to Jihad, a tract called “Join the Caravan:”

Beloved brother! Draw your sword, climb onto the back of your horse, and wipe the blemish off your ummah. If you do not take the responsibility, who then will?

That same Jihadist tract was found on Dzhokhar Tsarnaev’s computer.

Laher’s website contained a large collection of his writings and of sermons he gave in the Boston area. These sermons are replete with calls for Jihad, such as this passage:

When the Muslim lands are being attacked, and the Muslims are being raped and killed, the only solution prescribed by Allah is jihad. Jihad is for all times. […] Jihad does not stop. Those of us who have not yet managed to go and physically help our brothers and sisters should support […] our mujahidin brethren with prayer, with money, with clothes, by taking care of their families, and at some point in person. Otherwise, we must face the wrath of Allah.

One of the MIT students who answered Laher’s call to join the Jihad in person was a bright young biologist named Aafia Siddiqui. She started out as a passionate and prolific fundraiser for Care International, but by the time she was arrested by the FBI in Afghanistan in 2008, she was known as “Lady Al Qaeda” and had become the most wanted woman in the world. She is now serving an 86-year prison sentence for attempting to kill the FBI agents arresting her. Her belongings upon arrest included two pounds of cyanide and plans for mass casualty attacks on New York using chemical and biological weapons, as well as literature about the Ebola virus.

While Laher’s sermons preached the general Islamic obligation to do Jihad, Care International’s website along with its newsletter “Al Hussam” (“The Sword”) promoted what Laher and his fellow Care leaders saw as the concrete performance of that responsibility. In the late 1990s, Care International focused its fundraising activity on the Russian breakaway republic of Chechnya. Specifically, Care International backed the Al Qaeda-affiliated terrorists under the leadership of Chechen warlord Shamil Basayev.

Basayev can arguably be described as one of the cruelest Islamic terrorists in modern Jihadist history. Our documentary recounts one of his cruelest acts: the Beslan School Massacre. On September 1, 2004, during a ceremony marking the first day of school, Basayev’s men surrounded the school in the town of Beslan in southern Russia and took over 1,100 people hostage, nearly eight hundred of them children. They murdered several people on the spot in front of the children and herded everyone into a sweltering gymnasium, where the hostages were kept without food or water for three days as bombs were hung up from the rafters and basketball hoops above them. On the third day, the terrorists started setting off the bombs and Russian security forces stormed the school as shell-shocked children ran the other way and were shot in the back by the terrorists. Three hundred and eighty five people were murdered, among them one hundred and eighty six children. Subsequently, Shamil Basayev bragged about his “success” at Beslan and the fact that the attack only cost him 8,000 Euros to launch. He was killed by Russian security forces in 2006.

Care International raised huge amounts of money for jihad around Boston, $1.7 million according to Federal authorities. A large portion of this money came through checks that were specifically earmarked for “Chechen Muslim fighters.” Throughout the late 1990s and early 2000s, Care International hosted dispatches and communiques from Basayev and his forces in the field. A Care International “Al Hussam” newsletter praised a previous Basayev hostage operation against a Russian hospital’s maternity ward:

Minute by minute the whole world watched with agony, as some of the Mujahideen (not exceeding 80), under the leadership of Mujahid Shamil Basyev took 1500 Russians […] We cannot depend on anybody’s help; we have to fight evil with evil. The operation of the Mujahid Shamil Basayev is perfect proof.

How could MIT’s Muslim chaplain have led a group that applauded and funded such a savage?

In 2003, the FBI began investigating Care International for terrorism financing. At the same time, Basayev and his organization were designated as foreign terrorists. The flow of money from Boston to Chechnya stopped. After the Beslan Massacre, Basayev complained that the lack of funding prevented him from seizing more schools in Moscow and Leningrad. Because Basayev was not officially considered a terrorist before 2003, there was little the FBI could do to prosecute Laher and his fellow activists. Three Care leaders, including the group’s treasurer, received minor sentences for tax evasion. After being questioned by the FBI, Laher walked free and continued to influence students at MIT for more than another decade. His successor as MIT’s Muslim Chaplain, Hoda Elsharkawy, is herself closely linked through her husband to Laher and to Islamic extremism in Boston, which will be the focus of our future reporting.

While Laher officially stepped down from his post as MIT chaplain in 2014, he continues to preach at mosques in the Boston area, including the Tsarnaev’s own mosque, the Islamic Society of Boston – giving a sermon there as recently as May 1, 2015….

 

Obama, Tattle-Tail Runs to UN on Law Enforcement

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Obama and his previous and current U.S. Attorney General at the Department of Justice are on an alarming mission to destroy law enforcement across the United States, calling their work violations of human rights. Obama has chosen to whine about police departments in America to the United Nations Human Rights Council. Really? Is he asking for the United Nations to apply sanctions to our law enforcement?

The UN Security Council is and never has been a judge of Human Rights where countries like Nigeria, Somalia, Sudan, Libya, Syria are omitted from his diatribe and are ignored by the UN as well.

Anyone remember Hamas using children as human shields during the last round of hostilities in Gaza?

Congress has stopped Barack Obama from transferring Guantanamo detainees and closing the facility while the White House has been sneaky and doing transfers and trades without advising Congress. Barack Obama is working to stop all death penalty sentences in America but he says little about sex trafficking, known slavery by other countries and worse he has no interest in protecting the slaughter of Jews and Christians in the Middle East.

Obama’s twisted logic is to report what he considers misguided adherence to law to the United Nations inviting other countries to participate our domestic debates. Simply stated, Barack Obama is deferring oversight of our justice and legal system to an international corrupt institution.

Remember that ‘red-line’ Obama declared on the use of chemical weapons in Syria? Crickets as Syria continues to use chlorine barrel bombs against citizens. Is there any doubt that Obama really does hate America? Shameful…

Obama Admin Apologizes to U.N. for American Cops

Promises to prosecute those who “wilfully use excessive force.”

The Obama administration apologized Monday to the United Nation’s Human Rights Council for American law enforcement personnel whom it described as “willfully us[ing] excessive force,” at times with racist motivation. In its defense of its handling of the issue, the administration touts prosecuting over 400 law-enforcement officials and committing itself to take down those found guilty in the future.

The Associated Press reports that the U.N. human rights council—which includes dozens of countries with deplorable human rights records—voiced “widespread concern” about unjust practices by American police. The Obama administration responded by vowing to “rededicate” itself to ensuring that “our civil-rights laws live up to their promise” and touting its punishment of out-of-control personnel:

“We must rededicate ourselves to ensuring that our civil-rights laws live up to their promise,” Justice Department official James Cadogan told delegates, adding that that is particularly important in the area of police practices and pointing to recent high-profile cases of officers killing unarmed black residents.

“These events challenge us to do better and to work harder for progress through both dialogue and action,” he said at the session’s opening. He added that the government has the authority to prosecute officials who “willfully use excessive force,” and that criminal charges have been brought against more than 400 law-enforcement officials in the past six years.

The council presented calls for changes to other U.S. policies, including abolishing the death penalty, curbing NSA surveillance programs, and closing Guantanamo Bay.

Administration officials responded with the standard non-answers. On execution, Deputy Assistant Attorney General David Bitkower explained that the “controversy” over executions in America was an ongoing “extensive debate.” As for U.S intelligence gathering, Bitkower vaguely defended the programs by saying they are “subject to stringent and multilayered oversight mechanisms.”

As for the call to close Gitmo, Brig. Gen. Richard Gross said President Obama has called shutting down Gitmo a “national imperative” and remains committed to the cause despite being thwarted by Congress. The remaining inmates after Obama’s transfer of many in recent years, the administration maintained, were all there legally.

The U.S. human rights review was part of the “Universal Periodic Reviews” of U.N. members. The reviews occur every four years. This is the second such review for the U.S, the last occurring in 2010.

Tunisia, Revolution Then and Now and Again

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The new normal is here and it suggests that protests, aggressions, hostilities and war is part of the every day future unless a multi-track cure is introduced.

In 2013, it was said ‘North Africa is the next frontier in the War on Terror’….

From a 2011 summary on the Arab Revolution:

A year ago, 26-year-old Mohamed Bouazizi was getting ready to sell fruits and vegetables in the rural town of Sidi Bouzid, Tunisia. Bouazizi was the breadwinner for his widowed mother and six siblings, but he didn’t have a permit to sell the goods. When the police asked Bouazizi to hand over his wooden cart, he refused and a policewoman allegedly slapped him. Angered after being publicly humiliated, Bouazizi marched in front of a government building and set himself on fire. His act of desperation resonated immediately with others in the town. Protests began that day in Sidi Bouzid, captured by cellphone cameras and shared on the Internet. Within days, protests started popping up across the country, calling upon President Zine El Abidine Ben Ali and his regime to step down. About a month later, he fled.

The revolution begins…

Predictions are important and are based on historical facts, current conditions, tracking people, policy, money and weapons. To see into the future, analysts must form dynamic summaries and then work to give credibility to them or alter them daily as new ground conditions dictate. Is there another Arab Spring, Summer or Fall coming? All clues and symptoms point to yes.

In part from Reuters, Africa:

“We exhausted all our options,” said Zied Salem, who graduated in mathematics nine years ago but made a living from smuggling until a government clampdown ended even that. “After the revolution we had a dream but now they stole our dream.” Salem warned Tunisia’s democratically-elected leaders that they risked suffering the same fate as autocrat Zine El-Abidine Ben Ali, who fell in the 2011 revolution. “If they do not provide us jobs quickly, their lives will be darker. We will revolt and expel them like Ben Ali,” said Salem, who pitched his tent in front of the phosphate company’s office. Despair is not new. In late 2010, a young man burned himself to death in protest, setting off the revolution that swept Tunisia to democracy and the region into uprisings.

Between the Islamic State and al Qaeda in Tunisia

by Aaron Zelin

If al-Qaeda and IS operatives in Tunisia decide to challenge each other for local jihadist supremacy, the result could be more high-profile attacks that threaten the country’s summer tourist industry. Over the past month, there are increasing signs that The Islamic State (IS) intends to build a base and set up a new wilayah (province) in Tunisia in the near future named Wilayat Ifriqiya, a medieval name for the region of Tunisia (as well as northwest Libya and northeast Algeria). This would challenge al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghrib’s (AQIM) Tunisian branch Katibat ‘Uqba ibn Nafi’s (KUIN) monopoly on insurgency and terrorism since their campaign in Jebel Chambi began in December 2012, opening another front in the broader AQ-IS war. As a consequence, outbidding between these two adversaries could lead to an escalation in violence, with Bardo National Museum style attacks becoming more common.

THE ISLAMIC STATE SIGNALING IN TUNISIA

In mid-December last year, IS directed its first overt message to the Tunisian state and its people. Aboubaker el-Hakim (who went by Abu al-Muqatil in the video) claimed responsibility for the assassination of Tunisia’s secular leftist politicians in 2013 — “Yes, tyrants, we’re the ones who killed Chokri Belaid and Mohamed Brahmi” — thus confirming the Ennahda-led government’s suspicions that he was involved. Beyond calling for more violence and for Tunisians to remember its imprisoned brothers and sisters, he also called upon the Tunisian people to pledge bay’a to Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, to raise the banner of tawhid (pure monotheism) and to rip down the flags of Charles de Gaulle and Napoleon (alluding to the historically close relations between Tunisia and France). This was followed on April 7th by Abu Yahya al-Tunisi of IS’s Wilayat Tarabulus in Libya, who urged Tunisians to travel to Libya for training in order to establish and extend the writ of IS back at home. Only two days later, a new media account, Ajnad al-Khilafah bi-Ifriqiya (Soldiers of the Caliphate in Ifriqiya) Media Foundation, was created. While unofficial, it foreshadowed the targeting of Tunisia in much the same way the establishment of al-‘Urwah al-Wuthqa (The Indissoluble Link) Media foreshadowed the pledge of bay’a given by Boko Haram to IS in March 2015. Besides IS’s claim of responsibility for the Bardo National Museum attack (which the government actually believes KUIN was responsible for), Ajnad al-Khilafah bi-Ifriqiya Media announced IS’s first claim of responsibility for an insurgent attack in Jebel al-Meghila, near the town of Sbeitla. Additionally, Ajnad al-Khilafah bi-Ifriqiya Media claimed responsibility on April 22 for a separate attack in Jebel Salloum, in which one of its Algerian fighters was killed (signaling to Tunisians as well that other nationalities were within its ranks.) This was followed by IS official media disseminators, including Ajnad al-Khilafah bi-Ifriqiya Media, claiming responsibility for attacks in Tunisia on May 2, also in Jebel Salloum. This increasingly formalized approach suggests that the official announcement of a new wilayah may be imminent.

AL-QAEDA IN THE ISLAMIC MAGHRIB’S TUNISIAN GAMBIT

Although KUIN was first identified as a Tunisian cut-out for AQIM in December 2012 by then Tunisian Interior Minister Ali Larayedh, it was not until mid-January 2015 that the battalion publicly acknowledged the association. This pledge was reaffirmed by KUIN following the death of its leader Khalid Shaaib (Abu Sakhr Lukman) in late March and was an attempt to consolidate strength following false rumours that the KUIN might switch sides to IS. These rumors emanated in part from a statement by KUIN showing support for IS though there was no indication of bay’a. The need to distinguish between general support and a religiously-binding pledge of allegiance is vital — AQAP released a statement in support of IS in Iraq after the fall of Mosul last year. KUIN has also identified with Ansar al-Sharia in Tunisia (AST) when announcing martyrs, highlighting how some of its fighters are former members. AST has become largely defunct however, with members either being arrested, going abroad to fight and train in Syria and Libya, or joining up with KUIN followings its designation by the Tunisian government as a terrorist organization in late August 2013. Since it first entered the public gaze, KUIN has remained obscure, maintaining a low-level insurgency with the Tunisian military for 2.5 years in Jebel Chambi. Members have also been arrested for attempted attacks in different cities of Tunisia as well as for weapons smuggling. More recently it has increased its online profile, at first through the Fajr al-Qayrawan Facebook and Twitter account and then Ifriqiya Media, a well-known non-partisan aggregator of online jihadi releases from all African-based jihadi organizations. Only this past weekend, KUIN created an official media outlet for itself called al-Fatih (the conqueror). Up until then, the main content it released showed pictures of its fighters, martyrs, training camps, graphics with quotes from the Qur’an and ghana’im (spoils of war) from its past operation in Hanchir Ettala.

WHAT NOW?

While KUIN has been involved in a low-level insurgency for 2.5 years, it has not altered the status quo in Tunisia. Therefore, if IS attempts a full-scale terrorist or insurgent campaign in Tunisia, pressure on KUIN could mount and an outbidding scenario of escalating violence could ensue. It could also put more pressure on the Tunisian state, which has up to now been able to maintain control against jihadis since the revolution. That said it is possible one or both organizations might attempt a large-scale attack that would gain a huge media audience, given the onset of tourist season. Moreover, in the aftermath of the Bardo National Museum attack, supporters of IS flipped the popular meme #IWillComeToTunisiaThisSummer in support of the Tunisian tourism industry on its head by showing off with bullets and weapons, intimating that they too would be coming to Tunisia this summer. Vigilance from both the state and the public, then, will be vital in maintaining order and diminishing the effects of violence.

How DID Obama Corrupt ICE Procedures?

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‘Immigration and Naturalization Services has/had been in effect since the 1950’s using a program called Secure Communities. (But not anymore)

Secure Communities is a simple and common sense way to carry out ICE’s priorities. It uses an already-existing federal information-sharing partnership between ICE and the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) that helps to identify criminal aliens without imposing new or additional requirements on state and local law enforcement. For decades, local jurisdictions have shared the fingerprints of individuals who are arrested or booked into custody with the FBI to see if they have a criminal record. Under Secure Communities, the FBI automatically sends the fingerprints to DHS to check against its immigration databases. If these checks reveal that an individual is unlawfully present in the United States or otherwise removable due to a criminal conviction, ICE takes enforcement action – prioritizing the removal of individuals who present the most significant threats to public safety as determined by the severity of their crime, their criminal history, and other factors – as well as those who have repeatedly violated immigration laws.

‘The Obama Administration’s announcement on November 20, 2014, that it is replacing the Secure Communities program with a new Priority Enforcement Program (PEP) may moot certain questions, since detainers are to be used differently with PEP than with Secure Communities.’

With little fanfare or media reporting, this termination of one program for the sake of another has proven to be a major threat to national security as directed by the Department of Homeland Security where detainers are solely at the discretion of conditions that no one understands including judges hearing cases. In short however, those being detained by ICE are the worst of the worst and time is against ICE due in part of a 48 hour detention limitation where all background investigation evidence must be attached. Sounds simple, but it is hardly simple or easy at all. Felons, not families, criminals not children, gangs not traffickers of narcotics. Even Secretary of DHS, Jeh Johnson signed a memo that this new White House operation failed.

Then there is a major question of which agency has custody of those detained. What? Does it really matter? Just the facts……

Some have also suggested that a federal regulation—which provides that law enforcement agencies receiving immigration detainers “shall maintain custody of the alien for a period [generally] not to exceed 48 hours”—means that states and localities are required to hold aliens for ICE. Prior versions of Form I-247 may also have been construed as requiring compliance with detainers. However, in its recent decision in Galarza v. Szalczyk, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the

Third Circuit rejected this view. Instead, it adopted the same interpretation of the regulation that the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has advanced, construing it as prescribing the maximum period of any detention pursuant to a detainer, rather than mandating detention.

In addition, questions have been raised about who has custody of aliens subject to detainers, and whether the detainer practices of state, local, and/or federal governments impinge upon aliens’ constitutional rights. Answers to these questions may depend upon the facts and circumstances of particular cases. For example, courts have found that the filing of a detainer, in itself, does not result in an alien being in federal custody, although aliens could be found to be in federal custody if they are subject to final orders of removal. Similarly, holding an alien pursuant to a detainer when there is not probable cause to believe the alien is removable could be distinguished from holding an alien when there is probable cause, or when the alien is subject to a removal order.

The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) emphasized that it prioritized “criminal aliens,” those who posed a threat to public safety, and repeat immigration violators for removal through Secure Communities,6and the former Director of ICE further instructed that, among “criminal aliens,” the focus was to be upon those convicted of “aggravated felonies,” as defined in the Immigration and Nationality Act (INA); those convicted of other felonies; and those convicted of three or more misdemeanors.

*** So all this begs new questions yet to be addressed. Exactly where did those crime occur and who has that information with regard to those immigrants now in the U.S. illegally? How bad were those crimes? What names were used or have since been changed? Syria, Iraq, China, Pakistan…do any of these countries have historical records on people that they are providing to ICE, Border Patrol, the FBI or the State Department? Facts say no. How many Mohammad’s are now Jose?

Just this past November, the Barack Obama attached his name to a FACT SHEET for accountability Executive Action. Here is the ‘eye-roll’.

The President’s Immigration Accountability Executive Actions will help secure the border, hold nearly 5 million undocumented immigrants accountable, and ensure that everyone plays by the same rules.  Acting within his legal authority, the President is taking an important step to fix our broken immigration system.

These executive actions crack down on illegal immigration at the border, prioritize deporting felons not families, and require certain undocumented immigrants to pass a criminal background check and pay their fair share of taxes as they register to temporarily stay in the U.S. without fear of deportation.

These are common sense steps, but only Congress can finish the job. As the President acts, he’ll continue to work with Congress on a comprehensive, bipartisan bill—like the one passed by the Senate more than a year ago—that can replace these actions and fix the whole system.

Three critical elements of the President’s executive actions are:

Cracking Down on Illegal Immigration at the Border:  The President’s actions increase the chances that anyone attempting to cross the border illegally will be caught and sent back. Continuing the surge of resources that effectively reduced the number of unaccompanied children crossing the border illegally this summer, the President’s actions will also centralize border security command-and-control to continue to crack down on illegal immigration.
Deporting Felons, Not Families: The President’s actions focus on the deportation of people who threaten national security and public safety. He has directed immigration enforcement to place anyone suspected of terrorism, violent criminals, gang members, and recent border crossers at the top of the deportation priority list.
Accountability – Criminal Background Checks and Taxes: The President is also acting to hold accountable those undocumented immigrants who have lived in the US for more than five years and are parents of U.S. citizens or Lawful Permanent Residents.  By registering and passing criminal and national security background checks, millions of undocumented immigrants will start paying their fair share of taxes and temporarily stay in the U.S. without fear of deportation for three years at a time.
The President’s actions will also streamline legal immigration to boost our economy and will promote naturalization for those who qualify. Read the full fact sheet here.

 

 

 

Beirut to Benghazi, 32 Years Later

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For decades, studies have been performed on what led up to the attacks on U.S. facilities in Beirut all covering issues from forecasting the attack, to the motivations of the attack, to protecting further attacks to what went wrong. Thirty-two years later we are still in much the same feeble security condition as well as naming those behind attacks and what stimulated the attacks yesterday, today and tomorrow.

While the U.S. military is chartered with security of U.S. interests globally, the Rules of Engagement as susceptible to robust scrutiny by agencies outside the Pentagon, namely the State Department and the National Security Council. Winning the ‘hearts and minds’ ethos did not work 32 years ago, it did not work with al Qaeda, the Taliban or even North Korea much less Iran. The sensitivity doctrine as practiced today by the White House and the State Department with regard to the wide talks with Iran have proven to be not only misguided but dangerous.

Knowing history is key so as not to repeat mistakes. After Action Reports are investigated and published to ensure more effective pro-active measures against all enemies. The Long Commission report on the attacks in Beirut was crafted such that Benghazi never should have happened and frankly neither should have the event in Garland, Texas. We repeat and repeat the stupidity and it stays bloody. There are National Security threats to America and those threats to do include Climate Change or federalizing law enforcement.

Text in part from the Long Commission Report, full text is here and here.

Summary of General Observations.

1. Terrorism.

The Commission believes that the most important message it can bring to the Secretary of Defense is that the 23 October 1983 attack on the Marine Battalion Landing Team Headquarters in Beirut was tantamount to an act of war using the medium of terrorism. Terrorist warfare, sponsored by sovereign states or organized political entities to achieve political objectives, is a threat to the United States that is increasing at an alarming rate. The 23 October catastrophe underscores the fact that terrorist warfare can have significant political impact and demonstrates that the United States, and specifically the Department of Defense, is inadequately prepared to deal with this threat. much needs to be done, on an urgent basis, to prepare U.S. military forces to defend against and counter terrorist warfare.

2. Performance of the USMNF.

The USMNF was assigned the unique and difficult task of maintaining a peaceful presence in an increasingly hostile environment. United States military personnel assigned or attached to the USMNF performed superbly, incurring great personal risk to accomplish their assigned tasks. in the aftermath of the attack of 23 October 1983, U.S. military personnel performed selfless and often heroic acts to assist in the extraction of their wounded and dead comrades from the rubble and to evacuate the injured. The Commission has the highest admiration for the manner in which U.S. military personnel responded to this catastrophe.

3. Security following the 23 October 1983 Attack.

The security posture of the USMNF subsequent to the 23 October 1983 attack was examined closely by the Commission. A series of actions was initiated by the chain of command to enhance the security of the USMNF, and reduce the vulnerability of the USMNF to further catastrophic losses. However, the security measures implemented or planned for implementation as of 30 November 1983 were not adequate to

–4–

 

prevent continuing significant attrition of USMNF personnel.

4. Intelligence Support.

Even the best of intelligence will not guarantee the security of any military position. However, specific data on the terrorist threats to the USMNF, data which could best be provided by carefully trained intelligence agents, could have enabled the USMNF Commander to better prepare his force and facilities to blunt the effectiveness of a suicidal vehicle attack of great explosive force.

The USMNF commander did not have effective U.S. Human Intelligence (HUMINT) support. The paucity of U.S. controlled HUMINT is partly due to U.S. policy decisions to reduce HUMINT collection worldwide. The U.S. has a HUMINT capability commensurate with the resources ad time that has been spent to acquire it. The lesson of Beirut is that we must have better HUMINT to support military planning and operations. We see here a critical repetition of a long line of similar lessons learned during crisis situations in many other parts of the world.

***

What we are facing today on our own soil is bubbling to the surface as noted by recent arrests leading up to the shooting in Garland, Texas.

The Jihad At Home
ISIS strikes in Texas.
by: Judith Miller

Ben Torres/Getty Images News

Fortunately, no innocent people died in the militant Islamic terror attack Sunday night in Garland, Texas, where an anti-Islamist organization was holding a Mohammed cartoon-drawing contest. The two wannabe Jihadists, armed with assault rifles and body armor, proved no match for an off-duty Texas traffic cop, who shot them dead with his pistol. But had the “homegrown” terrorists been more numerous, better trained, or better armed, the attack might have proved as deadly as that on Charlie Hebdo, the satirical magazine where 12 people were murdered in January. Mitchell Silber, the former director of counterterrorism research for the New York Police Department and now with K2 Intelligence, a consulting group, called the Garland strike the “first ISIS-inspired terror attack on U.S. soil.”

On Tuesday, ISIS embraced the assailants in a statement on its radio station for the Garland attack, calling them “soldiers of the caliphate,” and expressing hope that they would be granted “the highest rank of paradise” for their attack. In another message posted on JustPasteit, an anonymous message board, the group claimed credit for the assault and warned Pamela Geller, the head of the American Freedom Defense Initiative, which sponsored the cartoon contest, that it would not rest until she was dead. Boasting that it has “71 trained soldiers in 15 different states,” among them Virginia, Maryland, Illinois, Michigan, and California, “ready at our word to attack,” ISIS vowed to send “all our Lions to achieve her slaughter.” The attack in Garland, the message states, was “only the beginning of our efforts to establish a wiliyah (authority or governance) in the heart of our enemy.”

While the authenticity of this message has not been independently confirmed, ISIS has frequently used that message board to publish propaganda. And terrorism analysts and law enforcement officials alike take seriously its warning that the Garland attack is only the start of a sustained effort to create havoc and fear through such strikes. According to a report published in April by the New York-based Anti-Defamation League, which fights anti-Semitism and other forms of religious, racial, and ethnic discrimination, this year has seen a dramatic spike in such attacks and plots by individuals inspired by ISIS and other militant Islamic groups. Since the beginning of the year, the report notes, 31 people in 11 U.S. states have been linked to “plots, conspiracies and other activity on behalf of foreign terrorist groups motivated by Islamic extremist ideologies.” The pace of arrests—unprecedented, notes the ADL report—is a “stark reminder of the varied extremist threats we face in this country,” warned Abraham H. Foxman, ADL National Director. While most of the attacks and more serious plots were hatched in other countries—most notably in Canada, France, and Denmark—“the U.S. is far from immune from the global reach of Islamic extremism,” he said.

Oren Segal, director of the ADL’s Center on Extremism, said that the “alarming” number of mostly young people drawn to jihadist causes demonstrates the “impact foreign terrorist groups have on this generation of homegrown extremists,” mainly through terrorist propaganda or communication on social media. ISIS, the report says, is the largest inspirer, accounting for 29 of the 31 individuals. Terrorism may well be a family enterprise, the ADL report suggests. Nine of the 31 have family members who have also been implicated in militant Islamic activity. Just over half are believed to have traveled or planned to travel to join terror groups abroad. Eleven of the 31 were engaged in domestic terrorist plots. Five of those arrested were female, which brings the number of women linked to Islamic militancy since the start of last year to a total of 14. At least seven of those arrested were converts to Islam—a trend first identified in a controversial 2007 report coauthored by Silber and published by the NYPD.

Considerable debate is underway about what is prompting the dramatic rise in such plots and attacks. Silber says that greater decentralization is an important factor. ISIS has issued a standing order to attack Western targets, “as in Nike’s old tag line: ‘Just do it!’ ” he said. Unlike al-Qaida, whose chief of external operations had to approve a plot in advance, aspiring jihadis can interpret mere “contact with ISIS and its supporters through Twitter and other social media as an order to mobilize.” At least one of the attackers in Texas had a history with terrorist groups and causes: Elton Simpson, who lived in Arizona, was indicted in 2010 for lying to the FBI about having discussed travel to Somalia, which he denied. In 2011, he was found guilty and received three years of probation.

The explosion of social media concerns terrorism and law-enforcement terrorism experts alike. “If the current rate of arrests continues,” Segal said, “the number of Islamic-extremist-related terror arrests in 2015 will exceed that of any previous year.” The best defense against such radicalization, he and others say, is an informed community.

But educating Americans about the danger increasingly posed by homegrown radicals may not be easy. Some analysts have spent almost as much time denouncing the anti-Islamist group that sponsored the event in Texas as they have the two dead attackers. The Southern Poverty Law Center called Geller, a free-speech advocate who has been highly critical of Islam, an “anti-Muslim propagandist.” The ADL, too, has branded Geller’s group an organization that spreads “virulent anti-Muslim bigotry and conspiracy theories.” Many of the group’s critics have suggested that Geller’s event provoked the attack by offering $10,000 to the person who drew the best caricature of Mohammed, an offense to many pious Muslims who believe that the Koran forbids depictions of their prophet. While spokesmen for both the ADL and the Southern Poverty Law Center stress that such provocative action in no way justifies a resort to violence, both have criticized conduct by Geller as offensive to Muslims.

Geller is having none of it. Continuing to portray herself as an advocate for free speech, she denies that she is anti-Muslim, but rather “anti-jihadi” and “anti-Sharia,” a reference to Islamic law. She also defends her controversial contest in Garland, saying that it is precisely the kind of event protected by the First Amendment. “Inoffensive speech doesn’t require legal protection,” she says. “Offensive speech does.”